Not really.

Even though we hope (were a wealthy donor to finance it) Adam Price would still jump at the opportunity, despite his present duties at the Salt Lake Art Center, the 337 Project is not actually in London. But the Guardian today reported on an art project to transform a soon-to-be-demolished housing project in Islington that reminded us of the 337 Project's original 2007 incarnation.

Watch the Guardian's video here.

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Plan-B Theatre's WALLACE
March 4 - 14
reviewed by Ann Poore

 

WALLACE comprises two solo plays about Salt Lake City’s hometown boy, Wallace Stegner (1909-93), and its homeboy (if we only knew it), Wallace Thurman (1902-34).

Though Thurman was born here and Stegner in Iowa, both were connected to Utah (even attending the U of U) and both were named Wallace. That was good enough for director Jerry Rapier of Plan-B Theatre Company to “braid” the plays by Jenifer Nii and Debora Threedy.

Surprisingly, given two such dissimilar souls, it works superbly.

Stegner, the environmentalist, novelist and short-story writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1972, opens the play wearing a sweater with something resembling the Calumet baking powder Indian knit around it. He lived happily, one might believe from this play blissfully, with wife Mary and ultimately retired to southern Utah. “The endless green of Iowa offended me. I was used to earth tones,” he says.

Thurman, a novelist during the Harlem Renaissance (think Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston), says that Salt Lake City “had an angel on every corner and a devil on every inbound train.” He wears a sharp suit throughout; his wife Louise would ultimately sue him for every penny he never made for his hedonistic lifestyle. He died at 32 at a New York City hospital on Welfare Island.

Played effusively and with tremendous charm by Carleton Bluford, it is hard to believe this isn’t Thurman channeled for our delight and our later sorrow. He is all that.

By contrast, Stegner as portrayed by Richard Scharine is reserved and almost dour a great deal of the time – he is, after all, a much older man than Thurman ever lives to be and conflicted about many things, especially his hard father. His exceptional reading from a chapter about a boy and a colt will leave you horrified.

The twangy verses of "Big Rock Candy Mountain" are a perfect introduction to the play, but later “background settings” from the speakers sometimes proved distracting. And sitting south of the actors in this horseshoe seating arrangement was occasionally a disadvantage when words were delivered too softly to those sitting in the north.

The n-word is used somewhat liberally in this production, but by a black man in an era-appropriate setting, referencing the n----- literati, for example.

Randy Rasmussen's set worked beautifully, particularly in Bluford’s varied utilizations of it. Cory Thorell’s lighting let the actors fade in and out without leaving the set. And where did Phil Lowe come up with Stegner's sweater?

UCONOCLASTS
Bookman Ken Sanders has set himself a project in three suites: Utah's Uconoclasts – Famous, Forgotten, and Infamous Utahns in Literary, Visual and Performing Arts. It was he who brought up Wallace Thurman to Rapier. (And Sanders likely also supplied the pre-production tunes.)

For this first suite, the literati, he has combined broadsheets of the likes of Juanita Brooks, Neal Cassady, Edward Abbey and Bernard Devoto with Trent Call’s portraits of each author, on display at the Rose Wagner, 138 W. Broadway, with a "shadow show" of prints of the portraits at his bookstore, 268 S. 200 East.

The world premiere run of WALLACE is virutally sold out; a few seats are available for the 4 p.m. performance on March 13. A new performance is being added at 5:30 p.m. on March 14; tickets for the performance go on sale March 5 at 10 a.m.

For more information visit Plan-B's website.

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Women in the Arts: Answering the Question
Kathryn Stedham, Mar. 2010

After relocating to the state nearly fours year ago and eager to learn more about Utah’s vibrant Arts community, a recent conversation with 15 Bytes editor and artist, Shawn Rossiter prompted me to ask, how does Utah rate on issues of art and gender? Given Utah’s largely conservative roots, it is easy to see how one could make certain assumptions about a state with the highest total birthrate, the youngest population, youngest married population and one of the few non-Southern states that has more males than females.

Adding this demographic into the artist equation, complete with it’s list of artistic stereotypes, one would think that we (artists) would stand together on issues that would serve to divide us further. Isn’t it, united we stand, divided we fall? Well, according to some among us, this isn’t so, and the gap--the issue of gender.

Not surprising then, that during the summer of 2009 a young, emerging artist was told by a popular UT workshop instructor that “taking on women art students is a huge waste of [my] time…they all get married and have children…” Of course that student was female. Aside from the obvious question of male students marrying and having children and likewise attempting to make an honest living--why wasn’t this scenario considered in the same way. Aren’t many successful artists married and/or have children?

Continue reading "Women in the Arts" »

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A native Californian, sculptor Rod Heiss came to Utah fourteen years ago to apply his skills as a craftsman during the state's building boom. When the housing market collapsed three years ago, Heiss encountered a moment of crisis. He made the most of the opportunity and threw himself back into his love of sculpture.

Read the full article HERE.

COMMENT BELOW

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In this month's edition Sue Martin interviews Amber Heaton as she prepares her installation for the Friends of Friends show at the GARFO.

Read the full article HERE.

COMMENT BELOW

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"Each painting is a journal, beginning as a blank surface within which to create a dialogue. Reynolds absorbs cues (be they visual, or not) from a variety of sources: images from the road, from walls; graffiti; random patterns. Pattern, shape, imagery, and content are processed and incorporated into his works in layers of meaning. Reynolds’ artist statement codifies this investigation: “My paintings are getting messier. The recent pieces lean toward the world of marks and lines more than that of shapes. Recognizable objects show up as they would on a wall exposed to random scribblers. I take my cue from casual graffiti, wall histories, tar repairs, paint-outs, old manuscripts, bird tracks, and maps.”

From Hikmet Loe's review of Paul Reynolds. Read the full article HERE.

COMMENT BELOW

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"Some theorists will tell you that the artist, along with the author, is dead, but many artists act as if the viewer is the deceased one. The freedom offered by the limitless possibility made available through plurality of form and content seems to be tempting artists to ignore the crucial partner in a work of art: the viewer. Art is not to be found in layers of paint or in the bristles of a brush but in using these with voice and vision, where content and form reach a state that allows for the phenomena of an exchange where the viewer is as important to this dynamic as the art . . ."

Ehren Clark explores closed and open circuits in the art of Jamie Wyeth and Tawni Shuler. Read the full article HERE.

COMMENT BELOW

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"March 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of National Women’s History Month. For this reason, I thought it interesting to poll smart and savvy women who are skilled and serious about their studio practice, promotion, and community involvement. No doubt, it’s a delicate proposition for a man to pose certain questions of women; but I had no doubt the responses from these two – Joey Behrens and Traci O’Very Covey – would reflect confidence, introspection and sincerity."

From Jay Heuman's article "The Feminine Artistique. Read the full article HERE.

COMMENT BELOW

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"Here are figures, ornamental vessels, and architectural bas reliefs from archeological sites throughout Latin America. In each case the familiar conventions have been subverted by the addition of found objects, materials, and references that are both contemporary to the audience and recognizably out of context. . . . ."

From Geoff Wichert's review of Inter-Continental Divide. Read the full article HERE.

COMMENT BELOW

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"The act of painting something that isn’t there visually, of finding a harmony between a developed technique and a state of mind can be unsettling for an artist. Take Coalson’s 2010 picture 'Am.' 'This one was a gestalt. It just came and went. It didn’t get built up like the others. It didn’t segue between the other pieces. It just happened,' she says. . . ."

Read Ann Poore's interview with Carolyn Coalson HERE.

COMMENT BELOW

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"A conversation with Francesc Burgos ranges from ancient ceramic firing methods to the way Mozart visualized a musical composition “almost as a three-dimensional form” before he ever wrote it down, a method not unlike this ceramist and sculptor’s manner of creating his own work. . ."

Read Ann Poore's interview with Francesc Burgos HERE.

COMMENT BELOW

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In this month's edition of 15 Bytes Amanda Finlayson tells us about a group of artists and art lovers who are throwing their creative weight behind Peter Corroon's Gubernatorial bid.

READ THE ARTICLE HERE.

COMMENT BELOW

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This week's edition of City Weekly features an interview with Salt Lake Art Center Executive Director Adam Price. Price talks with Ehren Clark (yes, our very own Ehren Clark, who has been known to moonlight for the weekly) about how the 337 Project pulled him into the art world and his vision for the Art Center's future.

Read it here.

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Tonight is Park City's Gallery Stroll (the last Friday of the month). From 6 - 9 pm you'll be able to catch the opening receptions for a lot of great shows, including the Sherri Belassen exhibit at Phoenix Gallery, featured in this month's edition of 15 Bytes. Also, be sure to see the de la Torre exhibit of glass art at the Kimball, which will be reviewed in our upcoming edition of 15 Bytes.

In Salt Lake tonight, the GARFO will be holding a reception for the opening of their new exhibit, Friends of Friends, which features 20 local, national, and international artist using paper as a medium and/or surface (7 - 10 pm). For the upcoming March edition of 15 Bytes, Sue Martin interviewed Amber Heaton, a local artist (seen below) who created a site specific installation for the exhibit.

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In our February edition of 15 Bytes we featured Alex Haworth's "Smog Lake City," an evocative visual exploration of Salt Lake's Main Street under a blanket of inversion.

The Salt Lake Tribune picked up on the story and in the paper's "The Mix" section Ben Fulton wrote "Smog in Your Eye," an article about Haworth's film and "The Smog Show," an exhibition of works by five Utah artists now up at the Bayleaf Cafe.

In preparing the video for publication in this month's edition we asked Alex to send us some info on current and upcoming projects. Since we discovered only after publication that his reply ended up in our junk mail, here it is, better late than never. . .

The young filmaker is currently editing a feature documentary on cowboy poetry. His partner at The Dada Factory, Davey Davis, is finishing up editing his first narrative short, a contemporary rendition of the Don Giovanni opera featuring local bike hipster and punk anarchist scenes. The pair's film, Halcyon, won best film last year in Salt Lake's 48 Hour Film Project. They'll be taking the film to Filmapalooza at NAB in Las Vegas this April. You can learn more and keep up to date with the filmmaker at his blog.

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On the occasion of February's Gallery Stroll, Gavin Sheehan talked with Savana Jones and Miranda Whitlock, who are showing this month at galleryuaf.

Read it here.

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Every year American Style Magazine ranks America's Top 25 Arts Destinations. Since the rankings are based on readers' votes, the list of winners -- separated by city size -- is as much about mobilization of voters in a city as it is about nationwide recognition. As you might guess, this can result in some odd rankings. Internal errors can be just as confusing. Miami is listed as a mid-size city, and in that category trails behind Alexandria, VA and Rochester, NY?

For the past three years the magazine has listed Salt Lake City in its list of 25 mid-size cities. Last year, however, our ranking slipped (but we did note that neither Boise nor Cheyenne even made the list, so maybe our "advertising campaign" is not that far off). So, if you think Salt Lake deserves to be recognized for its art -- we should at least be above Colorado Springs, right? -- take the time to go to the American Style web page and vote for your favorite art destinations.

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The Art Instinct
Denis Dutton
Bloomsbury Press
2009

Reviewed by Steve Holladay

It has been a year since Denis Dutton published The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, and since that time the book has continued to receive attention, both by art specialists and the public at large. In Art Instinct Dutton, a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand, and founder and editor of the website, Arts & Letters Daily, attempts to explore art, its history and meaning, through the lens of evolutionary science. Dutton's basic thesis is that our natural artistic preferences are rooted in evolutionary developments of the Pleistocene age. Our preference for landscape comes from our survival instinct. Our delight in storytelling is a Darwinian adaptation. Our respect for language, a result of sexual selection.

Dutton's book is a well-considered and orderly development of his ideas. His knowledge of both evolutionary science and the history of aesthetics is evident and presented in a manner free of jargon, so that the lay reader will find herself able to follow his arguments with ease. Specialists in the arts, however, may find some of his arguments objectionable or underdeveloped. Dutton's account for the type of landscapes preferred by 8 year olds around the world seems reasonable enough, but his theories do little to take into account the vast majority of our visual art, which is not related to the landscape. Dutton sees his theory as placing an artist like Marcel Duchamp on the fringe of artistic experience, rather than at the center, where much of contemporary theory has him. As a piece of "art-theoretical gesture" Dutton calls Duchamp's Fountain "incandescent genius," but he does not consider it art. That is because it fails to fulfill many of the points in a list of criteria Dutton establishes for something to be art.

While you may not agree with Dutton's criteria, the fact that he provides them will be a relief. In far too many discussions of art, the word itself is never defined. It is always considered a given, an unspoken one that is then used to dismiss much "non-art." Art Instinct's thesis does much to dismantle a good portion of theory that developed in the twentieth-century. Arguing against cultural relativism, Dutton says that evolution teaches us that there are universals in regards to art. Understanding them will help us indentify what is praiseworthy and worthy of retention, and recognize what belongs on the fringe of our concept of art.

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We're happy that you're a regular 15 Bytes reader and we want to encourage you to invite your friends to get a free subscription to Utah's art world.

We have a goal in 2010 to add 1500 new subscribers to 15 Bytes. Unlike with print publications, it doesn't cost 15 Bytes any more to have 30,000 readers than to have 3000. So, as long as we're going to do the work to put the magazine out every month, help us make it worthwhile. In return, you'll start having better conversations about art with your friends.

Below we've included a sample email that we've been using. Send it out to friends, colleagues, students . . . anyone. You'd be surprised who will be interested. We get subscriptions (120 so far this year) from across the country, and from art lovers as much as professional artists.

Shawn Rossiter
Editor, 15 Bytes


Subject: A free subscription to Utah's art world

15 BYTES

Published monthly by Artists of Utah (a non-profit organization), 15 Bytes gives you access to everything you could want to know about Utah's visual art world.

Interviews with artists, reviews of exhibitions, intimate looks inside artists studios, profiles of the people calling the shots and everything you'll need to keep you up on what's going on in the galleries, art centers, studios and impromptu venues from Logan to St. George.

You can see the current and archived editions of 15 Bytes at www.15bytes.com.

Subscribe for free by going to www.artistsofutah.org/subscribe.html

Pass this along to your friends and begin having great conversations about Utah's art world.

www.artistsofutah.org

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Watershed in Park City
by Geoff Wichert

To enter the main exhibit hall at the Kimball Art Center in Park City this month it is necessary to run the gauntlet between two giant, standing figures that flank the entrance. These are the Sentinels, primarily glass but with mixed media inclusions: an installation by international artists Einar and Jamex de la Torre. Confronting each other across the passageway, they recall guardian figures from the tombs, temples, and palaces of innumerable cultures, but specific details link them to the popular cultures and historical realities of the United States and Mexico: specifically, Kansas City (on the left while entering) and Michoacan (on the right). Like the monolithic Toltec figures of Tula they closely resemble, the Sentinels are covered with symbolic imagery and decoration. Like Coatlicue, the Aztec goddess with her skirt of writhing snakes and her necklace of human hands, hearts, and skulls, their details caution that reassurance is an illusion and nothing can be taken at face value.

The space occupied by the Sentinels’ crowns, heads, torsos, legs, and feet are marked out in space by sheets of glass that, being transparent and visible only by the light they reflect from within and without the figures, operate like three-dimensional versions of an engineer’s drawing, simultaneously showing the outer form while revealing the interior. Within, their bones are golf clubs, their lungs television sets playing video images that blow hot and cold like digital winds, their guts busy digesting personal memories and family histories. Everywhere there are signs of memories consumed: busts of Elvis dance with bottles of beer in Kansas City’s crown, while his trouser legs are decorated like the suit of lights worn by toreadors—or mariachis.

Inter–continental Divide, by any standards a large exhibit, is the product of four years of determined effort by Erin Linder, the Kimball’s Director of Exhibitions. While the de la Torre brothers have studios near Ensenada, in Baja California, and outside San Diego, the exigencies of glass—including adequately large melting and annealing furnaces and crews of an many as ten skilled assistants—require them to work in geographically diverse facilities. I first blew glass in the same time and place as they did: in the 1970s, in the hot shop of what was then Long Beach State College (now University), but in the thirty or so years that I’ve followed their careers, I’ve never seen their installations or public works in person. Like so much glass art, their works are large, heavy, and fragile, so assembling so many of them in one place is likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment. Any one of these pieces contains enough color, humor, cultural reference, political commentary, and human satire to keep the beholder busy, so it makes sense to plan more than one visit. As far as passing on Inter–continental Divide altogether is concerned, to miss this show would be nihilistic self-denial bordering on artistic vandalism.

Inter-continental Divide will be at the Kimball through April 18. Contact the gallery at >a href="http://www.kimballartcenter.org" target="_new">www.kimballartcenter.org or by calling 435-649-8882 for details on talks, tours, special events, and workshops related to this and two related exhibits: Utah Latinos: a Proud Legacy and Minuteclan. The March edition of 15 Bytes will look more closely at some of these activities.

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